Efficiency of Selective Attention: Selection by Colour and Location Compared

Abstract

Although we can selectively attend to colour, preknowledge of the location of a target has been shown to facilitate visual selection more than preknowledge of the target colour. Here the effects of peripheral flash cues and central colour cues were compared in three experiments. A novel colour-cuing procedure was used in which the target location was designated in advance by colour. Since variations in stimulus eccentricity and density similarly affected performance in both conditions, the colour cues presumably also made it possible to direct attention quickly to the target location. Thus, the colour cues in this study were analogous to symbolic location cues, such as central digits. Moreover, even though peripheral colour information was provided in experiments 1 and 2 only 84 ms before stimulus array, ie at the same time as the onset cue was flashed on, the effect of colour cues was comparable to that of peripheral flashes. This is a surprising finding given previous data on the time to interpret symbolic location cues and to allocate attention to the target location.